Breaking past the era of Peak TV
We are living in a ‘Golden Age’ of television. But now experts are warning we may have reached peak TV. There are, says Ed Power, just too many shows vying for our attention.
There wasn’t much fanfare when Breaking Bad aired for the first time ten years ago. The series is today regarded as one of the greatest small-screen dramas ever — a meditation on the dark underbelly of the American dream that, in teacher-turned-drug kingpin Walter White, gave us an anti-hero for the ages.
But when the show made its debut early in 2008 it is safe to state nobody involved was staking their future career on it.
Breaking Bad starred Bryan Cranston, aka the goofy dad from Malcolm in the Middle, as an everyman driven to a life of crime by the pressures and frustrations of day-to-day existence.
The pilot concluded with the character of Walter White in his underwear in the desert, shouting into a home movie camera. Whatever else could be said about Breaking Bad, it did not scream sure-fire smash.
Yet it would soon beacknowledged as a timeless portrayal of moral decline and fall. Breaking Bad is also, unmistakably, aproduct of the late 2000s.
A decade on, the TV landscape has changed utterly. So much so that there are grounds for wondering whether, were it to have come along today, Breaking Bad would have had anything like the impact it had in 2008. There’s simply too much television vying for our eye-balls. Would Walter White and his struggles had been sufficient to grab our attention?
“Peak TV” is the term coined for this ongoing epoch of television bounty. In the United States alone, 457 scripted shows were produced in 2017 — breaking the previous year’s record figure of 455. Since 2012, the number of scripted dramas has jumped 69%.
This might be assumed to be good news for viewers. There’s never been so much great TV to tuck into. The arrival into the market of Netflix, Amazon and, in the US, Hulu has forced established broadcasters to raise the game. The quantity of shows that has resulted is astonishing — regardless of whether you’re a fan of straight drama, thrillers, comedy or science fiction.
“The TV production boom is being driven in large part by the abundance of content that studios are pumping out in an effort to satisfy consumers’ changing viewing habits, which have shifted toward binge-watching and viewing on multiple digital platforms,” reported the LA Times earlier this month.
“The breakneck production pace is now year-round as cable channels and streaming services look to keep their subscribers hooked with a steady flow of new shows and seasons.
“We are living in television’s golden era, a moment akin to American cinema’s heyday in the Seventies,” went a Vanity Fair piece last summer.
“More than 450 scripted shows debuted last year, and at least 5 percent of those shows… are pretty darn good.”
But there are those who contend that Peak TV is, in fact, a crisis in the making. That it is possible to literally have too much of a good thing.
So much high quality television, runs the argument, has imposed on audiences the tyranny of infinite choice.
Should you watch The Punisher on Netflix or binge the entire season of Britannia on Sky Plus? You’ve been meaning to tune into Halt and Catch Fire, the supposedly riveting chronicling of the early years of the American computer industry. But what about series two of The Bridge?
Oh, and a 19th century criminal thriller is coming to Netflix in April. All going well, you might find time for it by September.
“There is simply too much television,” John Landgraf, chief executive of FX Networks (American Horror Story, Atlanta, The Americans) told a gathering of US critics in 2015. The public, he stated, “is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of TV shows”.
His remarks have met with push back, not least from Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos.
“We’re making a lot of television because tastes are incredibly diverse,” he said. “The idea that there’s too much out there is silly, and it’s a very kind of analogue idea of how to make programming choices.”
Landgraf’s prognosis was initially regarded as excessively gloomy — in particular, his fear that a bubble was about to burst, with painful consequences. Three years on, there are indications that Peak TV may have indeed achieved a crescendo and that the business is about to enter a period of retrenchment.
Consider that, even as Netflix has ratcheted up its investment in original content to a reported $7 billion in 2018, its been cancelling shows with a haste bordering on panic-stricken.
Gypsy, Girlboss, Sense8 — all received the chop in rapid succession across the past 12 months. Even the relatively critically acclaimed Bloodline — part of the earlier wave of high-calibre Netflix offerings — was quietly put to sleep in 2017. Fans protested. The rest of us — with too much TV already to watch — hardly noticed.
Over at Amazon, executives have similarly been yanking the plug. Just this month Jean-Claude Van Johnson and Tig Notaro’s One Mississippi were among the properties unceremoniously condemned to the slag-heap.
In the more tooth-and-claw world of basic and commercial cable, meanwhile, the number of scripted shows is actually down, by 4.3 per cent. That’s the first dip in over a decade. Change is coming.
Driving this trend are increasing indications of audience fatigue. Everyone knows there’s too much TV vying for our limited time.
Indeed, Peak TV has given rise to a entire new genre of television — dramas we sit down to not because we actively want to but out of a sense of obligation. Just like vegetables on our dinner plate, the assumption is that they are good for us. What choice do we have but grimace — and tuck in?
You might, for instance, have struggled with episode one of super-slow The Handmaid’s Tale. But you persisted because the show is so central to the conversation about gender and structural misogyny.
Chats with Marty and Bernard right now #DWTSIrl https://t.co/Eou8HM6xZr
— DWTS Ireland (@DWTSIRL) January 28, 2018
Perhaps you similarly sought out the greatly-acclaimed Black Mirror and were appalled to discover the first instalment was about a British politician becoming intimate with a barnyard animal. Everyone else is watching. Even if not immediately smitten, you feel you should stick with it.
Land graf predicted scripted television would peak in 2018 and then decline. The assertion is backed by firm data. In the US a PWC survey found that, while most respondents had access to four streaming platforms, they only regularly watched two.
The numbers of people who devote their TV time to programmes they “really like” is declining too, the study found.
There’s a case that,having feasted on quality television for the past 15 years, audiences are rediscovering the lazy pleasure of sitting in front of the screen and idly surfing channels. A&E (Bates Motel) is among the US networks cutting back on scripted content in favour of reality TV and documentaries.
“We are going to double down on nonfiction content where we are having a lot of success,” said general manager Rob Sharenow. “The market’s really hungry for it.”
It is surely telling, too, that five years ago gritty crime caper Love / Hate was the RTÉ hit everyone talked about. Now it is the Marty Morrissey-fuelled Dancing With The Stars. Nobody would claim the former is, at any level, superior to the latter. Sometimes, though, you just want to tune in in order to tune out.
Peak television may be about to have an awkward reckoning with the basic laws of light entertainment gravity.
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